staff pick

I love the staff pick shelves and so do the patrons. It's a challenge to keep them stocked, but I LOVE putting things on it and watching them go out, and I LOVE seeing what my coworkers put on the shelf and watching them go out, sometimes in my bag. It's a low-intensity pitch for things I like or find interesting. Stealth evangelizing! It makes me happy when someone picks something I've chosen. (which is all the time because putting books or music or movies on that shelf is like blood on the water for sharks, to borrow a gruesome image from the just concluded SHARK WEEK. Or maybe it's like feeding coal into an old timey steam engine headed up a mountain that needs to jump a bit of uncompleted track over a ravine full of hungry, hungry sharks, to borrow an image from the History Channel's imaginary upcoming TRAIN DISASTER WEEK starring Jackie Chan.)

I was going to bitch about the terrible things people do to library books (folding corners! underlining! cutting things out! leaving in 10000 post-its!), but I need to go to bed so I can't get my heart rate up with extra outrage or I will never get to sleep. (but seriously, if you do any of those things to library books - and I'm sure YOU don't - please stop.) I'd also like to make a quick note to those who think it's cute to leave notes to their friends and neighbors on hold slips: please stop. It's invasive and nosy and a little bit stalkery - there are other, less potentially creepy ways to communicate! It's not cute, which hypothetical you would probably realize if you thought about it for more than two seconds. As for YOU, Jerky McJerkface who writes things like "terrible book" on hold slips - I've got no patience for you at all. If I spy one of those I generate a new slip immediately. (P.S. it was a GREAT book, and even if it was terrible it's none of your goddamned business.) I feel obliged to note that most patrons are amazing and wouldn't dream of doing any of these things.

coming soon: things that are awesome!

(photo note: this isn't the staff pick shelf! it's a random picture from the GN section a couple of years ago because that's what I found.)